Analyses of God beliefs, atheism, religion, faith, miracles, evidence for religious claims, evil and God, arguments for and against God, atheism, agnosticism, the role of religion in society, and related issues.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

I recently went to Los Angeles to give a lecture to the Atheists United group in Hollywood. There was a big turn out with lots of thoughtful atheists. I got lots of interesting input. Several people asked to be able to see a copy of my Powerpoint presentation:

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

It’s a widespread practice among believers to defend God from criticisms with some variation of “God is beyond comprehension,” “your logic is not God’s logic,” or “God it beyond the limitations of our logic.”Even many non-believers seem to be willing that these are fair points and that critiques of God can’t really survive this rebuttal.

But if we scratch below the surface on this kind of talk, we can see that it really doesn’t make any sense; it’s a muddle headed evasion.There is no “our” logic that is separate from God’s logic, or lack thereof.A lot of people who haven’t reflected on what they are saying will throw claims around like these, but they haven’t recognized that what they are suggesting is unintelligible.There are several problems with it.First, they don’t really want to go there.If they try to assert that God is beyond logic, beyond comprehension, or that God’s goodness (and evil) are things that we can’t fathom, then they have effectively disqualified themselves from making any assertions about him.If we can’t understand God’s goodness, or power, or nature, then we certainly aren’t entitled to assert that it is true that God exists or that God is good.If they want to say that belief is reasonable, intelligible, supported by the evidence, rational, or epistemically inculpable, then they can’t also insist that God is beyond comprehension.You can’t have it both ways.On what grounds would you stand where you could assert anything about God if you have categorically denied that we can have any vantage on God?Even worse, on what grounds could you possibly insist that belief in something like this is reasonable when it cannot, by definition, be accessed by us.

Second, there’s a long history on this issue and it’s not just atheists who are holding God to the bounds of logic.The non-logical theist (NLT) needs to Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Plantinga, Craig,Weirenga, and a host of other philosophical theologians who all agree that God’s properties are all had within the boundaries of logic.Without logic, there won’t be any way to say it is true that God is X, because logic is what allows us to demarcate between true and false.Logic and reason are not things you simply discard when the fancy strikes you.Without them, you’ve got no way to even make an assertion.Without them, human speech acts are just gibberish.To make an assertion, even one like, “God is beyond logic,” is to assert that there is some state of affairs that obtains in the world.A sentence of the form, “X is . . . . “ says that something—X—is one way and not another.People like to say that our logic is limited and there could be things beyond it, but if something is not a thing and if it doesn’t have properties, then it isn’t a something at all.To be, to have a property, or to exist is to be one way and not another.The claims “God exists,” or “God is beyond logic,” assert that it is not the case that there is no God, and that it is not the case that God is subject to logic.The irony, and the profound paradox, of the last claim is that the speaker employs the logic of the assertion to try to liberate God from logic.But there’s no escaping that making an assertion is making a claim about the way the world is, and it is denying claims about what the world is not.What rules of assertion are you going to employ to argue for or claim that “logic is limited”?Logic?Then it’s not limited.Something else?How do we discern truth from nonsense, and falsehood in claims about logic itself if not by employing it?Or should we just accept all claims about the limits of logic without any argument or reasons?

If someone tells you that God is beyond the law of non-contradiction, then they’ve just left the realm of any intelligible discourse.There’s nothing to talk about when the fabric of logic that makes assertions possible itself has been rejected.Within the philosophical community, it’s pretty much accepted across the board that the Stone Paradox creates a problem for an unrestricted account of omnipotence.No one who has thought about it seriously thinks that being omnipotent, where “omnipotent” means the unrestricted power to do anything, even logically impossible feats, is even intelligible.

What the NLT is usually trying to do is dismiss questions, objections, or problems that non-believers raise with the notion of God that is so often presented to us.If God is beyond logic, and beyond comprehension, it would seem, then we need not be troubled by what appear to be blinding contradictions and conflicts between different parts of the God story.Suppose the NLT is attempting to salvage a belief in God from problems generated by deductive disproofs or the problem of evil, for example.So he is saying, in effect, believing is correct, there really is a God because these problems are only problems of appearance not real problems for a God who is beyond our conceptual capacities.This all begins to sound a great deal like double speak in Orwell’s Ministry of Truth where war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.If God exists no matter what, in someone’s mind, then it really doesn’t mean anything at all for God to exist.

So either the NLT is subject to the same conceptual limitations that he says you are or he isn’t.If he is, then he’s got the serious dilemma of explaining how his belief makes any sense in a context where he insists that humans cannot form reasonable beliefs.If he’s not subject to the conceptual limitations and he can comprehend God, then he’s contradicting himself.

The atheist, even though they would usually don’t make this kind of dirty move, is entitled to take the very same view is the theist is doing it.The atheist can say, “Look, I know that it seems like to you that all of the evidence and all of the indicators—design in the universe, miracles, etc.—all seem to indicate that God exists, but there’s really just the Big Nothing.But the Big Nothing, the vast empty void, the universal non-consciousness, is so far beyond our comprehension, we just can’t fathom how there can be a Big Nothing despite the fact that there are all of these indicators to the contrary.The Big Nothing doesn’t conform to our puny theistic logic.”

Put the problem another way. If God is beyond our conceptual abilities, and that’s how he can co-exist with evil, or exist even though such a thing seem incoherent, THEN ANYTHING GOES. That is, why can’t it be that the only supernatural being is Satan, or Vishnu, or Sobek, or Eeguu, or the Giant Marshmallow and even though it doesn’t make any sense with all that we know about the world, the Giant Marshmallow is not subject our puny logical and conceptual limitations. This is, of course, the point of the whole Flying Spaghetti Monster movement. The idea that there could be some sort of divine, supernatural pasta creature that is the creator of the universe is completely absurd and defies everything we know about the world. But if the believer gets to pull the “X is beyond comprehension” card—the get-out-of-any-jail-free card—in response to any counter evidence, then the Flying Spaghetti Monster is just as viable as God, or Satan, or the Giant Marshmallow. Since absurdities and counter evidence aren’t being allowed to count against the view, even in principle, then there can be no grounds by which to discriminate between an infinite number of asinine views. Clearly there is something deeply mistaken about a view that implies that there can be no rational grounds for preferring one hypothesis over any other. And now we can begin to see just how serious the cost of taking the NLT view is. Defending God, if we can call it that, in this fashion means giving up the rules that make belief, thought, and reasoning themselves possible. it’s the sort of thing you can say, but you can’t really be serious about because the very act of asserting it makes it clear that what you are asserting is nonsense.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Theodicies are, by and large, based on the view that because of a variety of constraints on logical possibility, omnipotence, omniscience, freewill, soul building, etc., this world is the world that God must make to accomplish his ends. People argue that God allows or inflicts evil in order to build moral virtue, to permit the exercise of freewill, or to punish. In some form or another, many of these justifications of the presence of evil presume that this is in fact the best of all possible worlds from God’s perspective. The reason that God permits the evils that he does is that to remove or prevent them would be to make things worse, on the whole, than they would be.

Heaven, as it is typically portrayed, is a better place than here.We are reunited with God, God does away with sin, all suffering is eliminated, God’s love is fully manifested to us, knowledge is complete, and so on.The particular details of the ways in which heaven is better than here are not important for my argument.

The paradox for the believer, as it should now be clear, is that they cannot both insist that God is constrained to allow evils in this world AND that he has the power to establish a better existence for us in heaven.If he can do it there, then he can do it here.And if he doesn’t do it here, then he’s not doing a good and loving thing that he should.

If heaven is a better existence than our current existence, then it is within God’s power to create a better existence for us than our current one. But God has not created a better existence for us than this one, so something is amiss in these two articles of believer doctrine.

The believer is caught between a rock and a hard place here.She either has to give up the notion of heaven, or give up the claim that the evils suffered in this world are tolerated by God because they are necessary for God to achieve his overall goals.

Neither of these options is going to be appealing.To give up either one is, more or less, to give up belief.Some justification for God’s tolerating evil is necessary for the believer if they are going to salvage the notion that God is an omni-being from the problem of evil.Heaven is what it is all about for most believers.The promise of a better life, reunification with God, and eternal bliss is a cornerstone of Christian metaphysics and doctrine.Without heaven, it’s not recognizably Christian.

Critics of this argument may miss the point.They will insist that suffering is beyond our puny powers to understand, or that it is deserved because of our depravity, or it is the result of our own exercises of power.We can provisionally accept any or all of these attempts to resolve the problem of evil.The gist of them all is that for one reason or another the suffering that ensues in this existence is the best way for things to happen, even though it doesn’t look like it.They are all attempts to reduce or eliminate the appearance that suffering is incompatible with God’s existence.None of these explanations will succeed unless we also accept the implicit premise that this world is, in fact, the best way that God could have set things up.If God could have set up a world where we could achieve moral virtue or exercise freewill without so much suffering, then he’s back on the hook for the problem of evil.Now the point of the argument is that if this existence is the best way that things can go from God’s perspective, then where is there room for heaven to be a better place?Any explanation of evil in terms of constraints that God operates under are going to apply ceteris paribus to heaven.

If God can grant us freedom without moral evil in heaven, then he can create it here.If God can endow us with moral virtue in heaven without genocides and tsunamis, then he can do it here.If God can reveal himself and his existence to us in heaven, then he can do it here.If God can create unsurpassable joy and love in heaven, then he can do it here.The believer can’t argue for restraints on God’s capabilities to explain away evil and then conveniently dismiss all of those same constraints in their characterization of heaven.

The goal of this argument is not that the problem of evil shows there is no God, or that there is no heaven, although those are both correct.The point here is to see that there is a profound and deep conflict in two of the most important pillars of the believer’s story about the world.If heaven is a better existence than this one, and it is within God’s power to bring that existence about, then all attempts to render God’s existence compatible with suffering are wrecked. These two views, held by billions of believers, are irreconcilable:

1) Heaven is a better place than this one.

2) The existence of suffering is consistent with God's being all powerful, all knowing, and all good.

My book is out:

Search This Blog

Atheism

Author:

Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester. Teaching at CSUS since 1996. My main area of research and publication now is atheism and philosophy of religion. I am also interested in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and rational decision theory/critical thinking.

Quotes:

"Science. It works, bitches."

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

"Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time. But he loves you! He loves you and he needs money!"George Carlin 1937 - 2008

Many Paths, No God.

I don't go to church, I AM a church, for fuck's sake. I'm MINISTRY. --Al Jourgensen

Every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, “It is a matter of faith, and above reason.”- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

If life evolved, then there isn't anything left for God to do.

The universe is not fine-tuned for humanity. Humanity is fine-tuned to the universe. Victor Stenger

Skeptical theists choose to ride the trolley car of skepticism concerning the goods that God would know so as to undercut the evidential argument from evil. But once on that trolley car it may not be easy to prevent that skepticism from also undercutting any reasons they may suppose they have for thinking that God will provide them and the worshipful faithful with life everlasting in his presence. William Rowe

Unless you're one of those Easter-bunny vitalists who believes that personality results from some unquantifiable divine spark, there's really no alternative to the mechanistic view of human nature. Peter Watts

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. E.O. Wilson

Creating humans who could understand the contrast between good and evil without subjecting them to eons of horrible suffering would be an utterly inconsequential matter for an omnipotent being. MM

The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity? It would be so easy to improve upon the 10 Commandments. How about "Try not to deep fry all of your food"? Sam Harris

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody--not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms--had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would think--though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one--that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true--that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great

If atheism is a religion, then not playing chess is a hobby.

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything--anything--be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in." Sam Harris, The End of Faith, 36.

"Only a tiny fraction of corpsesfossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water." Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 127.

One cannot take, "believing in X gives me hope, makes me moral, or gives me comfort," to be a reason for believing X. It might make me moral if I believe that I will be shot the moment I do something immoral, but that doesn't make it possible for me to believe it, or to take its effects on me as reasons for thinking it is true. Matt McCormick

Add this blog to your Google Page

Top Ten Myths about Belief in God

1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning.

There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan's 127 million people claim to be non-believers. It is laughable to suggest that none of these billions of people are leading meaningful lives.

2. Myth: Prayer works.

Numerous studies have now shown that remote, blind, inter-cessionary prayer has no effect whatsoever of the health or well-being of subject's health, psychological states, or longevity. Furthermore, we have no evidence to support the view that people who wish fervently in their heads for things that they want get those things at any higher rate than people who do not.

3. Myth: Atheists are less decent, less moral, and overall worse people than believers.

There are hundreds of millions of non-believers on the planet living normal, decent, moral lives. They love their children, care about others, obey laws, and try to keep from doing harm to others just like everyone else. In fact, in predominately non-believing countries such as in northern Europe, measures of societal health such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, per capita income, education, homicide, suicide, gender equality, and political coercion are better than they are in believing societies.

4. Myth: Belief in God is compatible with the descriptions, explanations and products of science.

In the past, every supernatural or paranormal explanation of phenomena that humans believed turned out to be mistaken; science has always found a physical explanation that revealed that the supernatural view was a myth. Modern organisms evolved from lower life forms, they weren't created 6,000 years ago in the finished state. Fever is not caused by demon possession. Bad weather is not the wrath of angry gods. Miracle claims have turned out to be mistakes, frauds, or deceptions. So we have every reason to conclude that science will continue to undermine the superstitious worldview of religion.

5. Myth: We have immortal souls that survive the death of the body.

We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist. So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist. Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies. Allegations of spirit chandlers, psychics, ghost stories, and communications with the dead have all turned out to be frauds, deceptions, mistakes, and lies.

6. Myth: If there is no God, everything is permitted. Only belief in God makes people moral.

Consider the billions of people in China, India, and Japan above. If this claim was true, none of them would be decent moral people. So Ghandi, the Buddha, and Confucius, to name only a few were not moral people on this view, not to mention these other famous atheists: Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, John Stuart Mill, Galileo, George Bernard Shaw, Gloria Steinam, James Madison, John Adams, and so on.

7. Myth: Believing in God is never a root cause of significant evil.

The counter examples of cases where it was someone's belief in God that was the direct justification for their perpetrated horrendous evils on humankind are too numerous to mention.

8. Myth: The existence of God would explain the origins of the universe and humanity.

All of the questions that allegedly plague non-God attempts to explain our origins--why are we here, where are we going, what is the point of it all, why is the universe here--still apply to the faux explanation of God. The suggestion that God created everything does not make it any clearer to us where it all came from, how he created it, why he created it, where it isall going. In fact, it raises even more difficult mysteries: how did God, operating outside the confines of space, time, and natural law "create" or "build" a universe that has physical laws? We have no precedent and maybe no hope of answering or understanding such a possibility. What does it mean to say that some disembodied, spiritual being who knows everything and has all power, "loves" us, or has thoughts, or goals, or plans? How could such a being have any sort of personal relationship with beings like us?

9. Myth: Even if it isn't true, there's no harm in my believing in God anyway.

People's religious views inform their voting, how they raise their children, what they think is moral and immoral, what laws and legislation they pass, who they are friends and enemies with, what companies they invest in, where they donate to charities, who they approve and disapprove of, who they are willing to kill or tolerate, what crimes they are willing to commit, and which wars they are willing to fight. How could any reasonable person think that religious beliefs are insignificant.

10: Myth: There is a God.

Common Criticisms of Atheism (and Why They’re Mistaken)

1. You can’t prove atheism.You can never prove a negative, so atheism requires as much faith as religion.

Atheists are frequently accosted with this accusation, suggesting that in order for non-belief to be reasonable, it must be founded on deductively certain grounds. Many atheists within the deductive atheology tradition have presented just those sorts of arguments, but those arguments are often ignored. But more importantly, the critic has invoked a standard of justification that almost none of our beliefs meet. If we demand that beliefs are not justified unless we have deductive proof, then all of us will have to throw out the vast majority of things we currently believe—oxygen exists, the Earth orbits the Sun, viruses cause disease, the 2008 summer Olympics were in China, and so on. The believer has invoked one set of abnormally stringent standards for the atheist while helping himself to countless beliefs of his own that cannot satisfy those standards. Deductive certainty is not required to draw a reasonable conclusion that a claim is true.

As for requiring faith, is the objection that no matter what, all positions require faith?Would that imply that one is free to just adopt any view they like?Religiousness and non-belief are on the same footing?(they aren’t).If so, then the believer can hardly criticize the non-believer for not believing. Is the objection that one should never believe anything on the basis of faith?Faith is a bad thing?That would be a surprising position for the believer to take, and, ironically, the atheist is in complete agreement.

2. The evidence shows that we should believe.

If in fact there is sufficient evidence to indicate that God exists, then a reasonable person should believe it. Surprisingly, very few people pursue this line as a criticism of atheism. But recently, modern versions of the design and cosmological arguments have been presented by believers that require serious consideration. Many atheists cite a range of reasons why they do not believe that these arguments are successful. If an atheist has reflected carefully on the best evidence presented for God’s existence and finds that evidence insufficient, then it’s implausible to fault them for irrationality, epistemic irresponsibility, or for being obviously mistaken.Given that atheists are so widely criticized, and that religious belief is so common and encouraged uncritically, the chances are good that any given atheist has reflected more carefully about the evidence.

3. You should have faith.

Appeals to faith also should not be construed as having prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence or arguments do. The general view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound, that imposes an epistemic obligation of sorts on her to accept the conclusion. One person’s faith that God exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable. At the very least, having faith, where that means believing despite a lack of evidence or despite contrary evidence is highly suspect. Having faith is the questionable practice, not failing to have it.

4. Atheism is bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing.

These accusations have been dealt with countless times. But let’s suppose that they are correct. Would they be reasons to reject the truth of atheism? They might be unpleasant affects, but having negative emotions about a claim doesn’t provide us with any evidence that it is false. Imagine upon hearing news about the Americans dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki someone steadfastly refused to believe it because it was bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing. Suppose we refused to believe that there is an AIDS epidemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people in Africa on the same grounds.

5.Atheism is bad for you.Some studies in recent years have suggested that people who regularly attend church, pray, and participate in religious activities are happier, live longer, have better health, and less depression.

First, these results and the methodologies that produced them have been thoroughly criticized by experts in the field.Second, it would be foolish to conclude that even if these claims about quality of life were true, that somehow shows that there is theism is correct and atheism is mistaken.What would follow, perhaps, is that participating in social events like those in religious practices are good for you, nothing more.There are a number of obvious natural explanations.Third, it is difficult to know the direction of the causal arrow in these cases.Does being religious result in these positive effects, or are people who are happier, healthier, and not depressed more inclined to participate in religions for some other reasons?Fourth, in a number of studies atheistic societies like those in northern Europe scored higher on a wide range of society health measures than religious societies.

Given that atheists make up a tiny proportion of the world’s population, and that religious governments and ideals have held sway globally for thousands of years, believers will certainly lose in a contest over “who has done more harm,” or “which ideology has caused more human suffering.”It has not been atheism because atheists have been widely persecuted, tortured, and killed for centuries nearly to the point of extinction.

Sam Harris has argued that the problem with these regimes has been that they became too much like religions.“Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag, and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”

7.Atheists are harsh, intolerant, and hateful of religion.

Sam Harris has advocated something he calls “conversational intolerance.”For too long, a confusion about religious tolerance has led people to look the other way and say nothing while people with dangerous religious agendas have undermined science, the public good, and the progress of the human race.There is no doubt that people are entitled to read what they choose, write and speak freely, and pursue the religions of their choice.But that entitlement does not guarantee that the rest of us must remain silent or not verbally criticize or object to their ideas and their practices, especially when they affect all of us.Religious beliefs have a direct affect on who a person votes for, what wars they fight, who they elect to the school board, what laws they pass, who they drop bombs on, what research they fund (and don’t), which social programs they fund (and don’t), and a long list of other vital, public matters.Atheists are under no obligation to remain silent about those beliefs and practices that urgently need to be brought into the light and reasonably evaluated.

Real respect for humanity will not be found by indulging your neighbor’s foolishness, or overlooking dangerous mistakes.Real respect is found in disagreement.The most important thing we can do for each other is disagree vigorously and thoughtfully so that we can all get closer to the truth.

8.Science is as much a religious ideology as religion is.

At their cores, religions and science have a profound difference.The essence of religion is sustaining belief in the face of doubts, obeying authority, and conforming to a fixed set of doctrines.By contrast, the most important discovery that humans have ever made is the scientific method.The essence of that method is diametrically opposed to religious ideals:actively seek out disconfirming evidence.The cardinal virtues of the scientific approach are to doubt, analyze, critique, be skeptical, and always be prepared to draw a different conclusion if the evidence demands it.